Greetings from Fort Lauderdale

Well, it seems that my big rant about the Miami airport might have angered the travel gods a wee bit. After a decent streak of about a year, travel disaster has once again come my way. I am, as I type, sitting in front of the TJ Cinnamons in concourse C of the Fort Lauderdale - Hollywood International Airport. This is one thing I love about this airport: free wireless internet throughout. Anyhoo, my plane out of Philly was late picking me up, then weather patterns caused them to cancel all northbound flights. You are probably wondering how this affected a flight to Ft. Lauderdale. Well, lemme tell ya. Seems there were a bunch of northbound planes already in line ahead of us on the runway, and some that had already taken off had to turn around and land again. This created a giant slide puzzle of aircraft which took a couple of hours to work out. Lucky me, I was seated in the middle of a row of 3 right next to a portly gentleman who had many, many anecdotes to share. Nice guy, but it was physically impossible for him to not encroach on my space. I finally arrived back here in Florida around 8:55 p.m., one hour after my connecting flight to Key West landed in Key West. Obviously there are not many flights to the keys on a daily basis, so yours truly had to get re-ticketed for 8:40 a.m. By the time I wrestled my bags away from the baggage carousel, got to a hotel, walked to McDonalds for a bite, and finally got to bed, it was 11:30. Getting back up at 5:30 and doing it all again was simply not fun. Enter TSA. For reasons unknown I have been getting the black spot for years at the screening area. This was my day to get the full-on glove and swab treatment. To their credit, the TSA agents were very nice and once they discovered my credentials were very chatty and interested in hearing about my job. This, thankfully, helped pass the time. I was fascinated by all the wiping of bags and electronics, especially my iPod. Thinking I was being smart and saving time in line, I had removed my steel-toed boots prior to entering the queue, which apparently I was supposed to wear into the puffer/sniffer thingy. As I had already placed them in the bin, they got the swab treatment too. So now here I am, in front of TJ Cinnamons, enjoyig a nice chocolate milk because they were all out of white. Add that to the over-iced cinnamon roll and I am super sugared-up for the plane. I am so looking forward to a home-cooked meal and a long night in my own bed. Thankfully I am done with air travel for a little over a month. Now if the Seven Mile Bridge will just stay clear...